Blue Shutters White Wall on Thassos

Blue Shutters on a White Wall on Thassos is a picture with a strong design element – perhaps a simple picture.

Of course. It’s possible to say a lot about windows – verging on the pretentious- openings to the soul and so on.

One thing that is clear to me is that over the years I have taken a large number of pictures with windows and shutters so there is some fascination for me.

There’s also a difference now that I’ve gone digital in that I often take pictures of windows and shutters in notebook style with the view of using them as design elements in other pictures that I might compose later.

Blue Shutters White Wall in Thassos – Photo Facts.

From the photographic point of view, the daylight is clear and bright with little pollution – obviously this leads to high contrast.

Lighting is so important in photography that it can make all the difference between a good and a bad photo.

Sometimes there are suggested rules – for example many photographers consider that lighting for outdoor photography is best in the early morning and evening and that midday is a sort of photographic no persons land.

This is often true but there are a couple of caveats:

Sometimes it’s impossible to choose the timing – if you want to photograph the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace then you can’t choose the time and this goes for lots of event and festival photography.

Another reason applies here – where your subject matter is vertical.

When the sun is high in the sky this is the time it provides shadows and emphasizes textures on walls and steep mountainsides and becomes the lighting of choice.

For this picture of blue shutters I was looking for the harsh lighting to give some 3 dimensionality to the subject.

I was struck by the repetition of shadows which gave some more detail and pattern to the white wall.

I shot from a position which would give some key stoning to the shutters and an angle to the top of the wall to provide some dynamism in the composition.

This is more or less a monochrome picture not black and white but blue and white. I think another colour would not have been so effective – blue shutters are more effective here than red, green or some other colour.

I shot the picture hand held with a crop sensor Canon camera.

The bright light meant I could choose a low ISO and a fast shutter speed to eliminate camera shake.